Peapod fine-tunes merchandising to boost basket size from $100 to $145
Online grocer Peapod is growing on plan at about 25% a year, due in part to increasingly sophisticated merchandising to its online shoppers, Thomas Parkinson, chief technology officer and senior vice president, tells Internet Retailer. But while it grows sales on the front end with a redesigned customer interface that’s helped raise the average basket size from $100 to $145 this year, it’s also finding ways to cut overhead. Peapod has reduced calls to its call center by one-third since the beginning of the year by increasing self-service functionality in the customer service area of Peapod.com, Parkinson says.
“We spent on self-service this year to reduce the number of calls to customer care,” he says. “For instance, changing your delivery address had been difficult. If you moved from Chicago to Boston, there is a whole different mix of products involved. That took a lot of phone calls to customer care to straighten out.” Newly automated customer service functions on the site this year include features that let customers change their address and user ID, as well as use an electronic checking account.
Now operating in the Chicago area where it`s headquartered and in a number of Eastern markets where it’s co-branded with brick-and-mortar grocery chains Giant and Stop & Shop, Peapod at age 14 is one of the earliest surviving entrants into the online grocery market. It currently faces little competition locally as the newer online offerings of brands owned by grocery giants such as Albertson’s and Safeway stay largely regionalized elsewhere. But as both Peapod and other regional players expand their markets, Parkinson says Peapod’s prepared.
“Were ready for it,” he says. “We are pretty certain that someone will be coming to Chicago at some point, but we believe we offer a better shopping service. We pride ourselves on higher-end perishables, being on time, and making it an overall quality experience.”
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